Monitoring the conservation of chiral memory during the solid-state cyclization reaction of linear dipeptides

We aim to investigate the fundamental mechanism of the conservation of chiral memory during the cyclization reaction of linear dipeptides. Our preliminary results showed that the chirality of the product (cyclic peptides) after thermal reaction depended on the absolute configuration (AC) of the residues of the reactant (linear dipeptides). After the cyclization reaction, the products spontaneously crystallized. This allows i) to refine the AC by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and to it compare with the configuration of reactants and ii) to investigate in situ the role of the AC of the residue in the morphological changes during the cyclization reaction using X-ray powder diffraction and Raman spectroscopy.